Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Australian FourFourTwo

1 BEST FANCY DRESS COSTUME EVER England Nottingham FourFourTwo has seen some pretty special fancy dress get-ups over the years, but a man turning up to a party dressed as a Rene Higuita scorpion kick may just about top the lot. Not content with merely sticking a perm on and pretending to be the Colombian goalkeeping legend/loon, the japester depicted Higuita laid on a giant plinth, balancing a football on his feet, to recreate his acrobatics at Wembley in 1995. Bravo, sir. 2 FANS WANT THEIR WANG OUT Netherlands The Hague We know things are quite liberal in the Netherlands, but fans of Eredivisie club ADO Den Haag seemed to be taking it all a bit too far when they unveiled a ‘Wang out’ banner during their game against Utrecht.…

1 AUSTRALIA 0 GREECE Melbourne, May 25, 2006 THE LEADUP ‘It was a really important game as it was the last one we had before we left for Europe before the World Cup, so it was sort of a farewell game for us. It wasn’t important in terms of getting a result, but more for us individually to have a good performance as we were all fighting for our positions at that stage. I remember being in my hotel in the Melbourne CBD about two hours before the game and seeing a sea of blue and white walking towards the MCG with flags and flares and all that sort of stuff. It was a sight you normally see in Europe and it had come to central Melbourne! Everyone got behind…

“I STILL WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THINKING I’M GOING TO CATCH MARADONA FOR THAT SECOND GOAL” Hull 2 Bolton 0 October 12, 1974 Division Two “My full debut [for Bolton] – I was an apprentice at the same time as Big Sam. Because of injuries I played at right-back against Roy Greenwood, but I handled it really well. That gave the manager a lot of faith in me.” Liverpool 0 Everton 1 October 20, 1984 Division One “I’m from the city so playing in the Merseyside Derby was a schoolboy’s dream. Graeme Sharp scored a great volley and it gave us the belief we could win the championship. The following week we beat Manchester United 5-0. Winning at Anfield was the catalyst – and we went…

“LIFE ISN’T ONLY ABOUT FOOTBALL. AFTER PLAYING I’D LIKE TO GO INTO THE MOVIES” Crammed inside an auditorium at the Portuguese Football Federation’s headquarters, a throng of journalists hold up their phones as if they’re hysterical teenyboppers at a Justin Bieber concert. The lights dim and a blanket of silence engulfs the room. Rio Ferdinand and Ricardo Quaresma – two familiar faces among the panel of luminaries sitting up on the stage – look over their shoulders at a giant TV screen. Inspiring music plays in surround sound as the screen flickers with a montage of Portugal’s talisman. Having left his seat for a prime view from the floor, Cristiano Ronaldo is fixated on the monitor, eyes wide, grinning ear-to-ear like a child mesmerised by their favourite cartoon. The film…

Your club’s been linked with an exotic foreign signing about whom you know nothing. Where do you turn? FourFourTwo.com , obviously, but soon after that it’s Adam Ali’s channel, ScoutNationHD. “I started making scouting videos on New Year’s Day, 2013, so I have been at it for nearly four years now,” Adam says. “The first videos I made were of Jackson Martinez, who had signed for Porto, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who was still playing for Saint-Etienne at the time. The standard of them was pretty poor, to be honest, as it was the first time I had ever edited video. “I used to search the internet to find articles about young players I could feature, but there’s a new system on YouTube that lets you do polls,…

Age 26 Height 6ft 3in Birthplace Benteke was born in Kinshasa – then the capital of Zaire, now of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – before moving to Belgium aged three Tough love “If I play rubbish, he tells me” – Benteke on dad Jean-Pierre Brothers in arms Benteke’s younger brother Jonathan (above) joined him at Palace in September Football friend As a child, Christian played street football in Belgium with Axel Witsel, now of Zenit Clever clogs He’s fluent in French, English and Lingala Flying start He hit eight goals in his first 13 league outings for the Eagles…

Ben Woodburn The 17-year-old is the youngest ever Liverpool goalscorer, after netting on his debut against Leeds. Girls who lift FFT love it that more women than ever are in the gym. Just don’t hog that squat rack. Oscarine Masuluke The Baroka FC keeper ventured forward to score a 96th-minute bicycle-kick leveller to stun Orlando Pirates. Team selfies Real Madrid players posed for a group shot after drawing with Barcelona. Just drawing! Where’s your pride, lads? Alcohol A study claims that boozing is a direct cause of seven types of cancer. Er, Happy New Year, everyone. Sergio Aguero The Manchester City man is lucky that he wasn’t charged with assault over this, er, ‘tackle’ on David Luiz.…

VIDMAR ‘When I played with him at the Mariners he was obviously just coming back from being a Socceroo and I was pretty young, so to have someone like that to learn from and mentor me was good. I was about 22 and he was obviously someone who had played at the highest level and who I hugely respected already, so it was great to have him become a teammate and a good friend.’ FABREGAS ‘I remember in the World Cup and he came off the bench with about 30 minutes to go and he was just untouchable – you couldn’t get the ball off him and he was everywhere. We’d be trying to press and trying to shut him down and he just made football look so simple.’ ROGIC…

Philosophy and football rarely mix. It’s hard to imagine toe-driller Darius Vassell delving too deeply into Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal works on existentialism, while Robbie Savage is either post-modernism’s purest of thinkers or a shouty berk who would probably argue with a tree – if only it knew how to answer back... “You’re wrong,” the former Leicester midfielder-turned-professional wind bag has almost certainly never shouted at an in-bloom larch, “it’s not summer.” A new book, however, is looking to prove that the average footballer has more in their locker, via the medium of clandestine T-shirt theologising. Disgusted by FIFA’s ban on players displaying any form of message in 2014 – Edinson Cavani was booked for unveiling a T-shirt in support of Chapecoense after a recent goal – graphic-design duo Craig Oldham…

 I knew I’d made it as a player when I debuted for my country in a 1-0 win against Canada and I’d only been a goalkeeper for about a year. “I made five career-best saves, but coach said it was my fault we were losing 3-0...!” I was happiest when I made the team for my fourth World Cup following the birth of my daughter Holly. My hero growing up was Michael Jordan. I was a basketballer – I only took up football when I was 14 – and I loved his work ethic and the fact that he didn’t make it straight away. He originally wasn’t selected for his high school basketball team and it was through adversity that he became the player that he needed to be and…

LIONEL MESSI The Flea’s still goal-crazy after all these years, reaching 50 for 2016 on November 1, although Copa America agony soured his Barça double and prompted a brief international retirement. LUIS SUAREZ During 2015-16, Suarez broke Messi and Ronaldo’s six-year stranglehold on the La Liga Pichichi Trophy by scoring a frankly ludicrous 40 league goals, with 16 assists to boot. RIYAD MAHREZ Having deservedly won both Fans’ and Players’ Player of the Year, the winger unexpectedly extended his contract – then bagged a brace on Leicester’s Champions League debut. GONZALO HIGUAIN Higuain hit a final-day hat-trick to equal Serie A’s goalscoring record set in 1929. His 36-goal campaign – 17 more than his nearest rival – led to a $110m move from Napoli to Juventus. ANTOINE GRIEZMANN Griezmann’s 2016…

If you’ve ever typed a football team’s name into YouTube’s search engine, you will probably have stumbled across a video of someone at home, playing as them on FIFA . “What a lot of people don’t understand is how seriously integrated into football things like FIFA and Football Manager are to younger fans,” says Spencer Owen, AKA Spencer FC, star of the FIFA-heavy YouTube channel. “That doesn’t mean I just sit there and start shouting about how I’m losing a game; I like to talk about real football as I do it. If I’m buying a player on a game, I will also mention what things I know about him in real life.” If you think this all sounds like a piece of cake, think again. “We…

“I’VE ALWAYS FELT FIT, BUT CAN’T REMEMBER MANY GAMES WHERE I DID NOT HAVE ANY PAIN. IF YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES” CLUBS 1998-2003 Utrecht 2003-06 Feyenoord 2006-12 Liverpool 2012-15 Fenerbahce 2015- Feyenoord COUNTRY 2004-14 Netherlands In 2015, after spending nine seasons abroad, Dirk Kuyt returned home to the club where he first became a star. During those campaigns – six at Liverpool and three at Fenerbahce – the Dutchman built a reputation as a hardworking everyman. Put simply, the kind of player fans adore. Yet the bond has never been stronger than with ‘Het Legioen’ – the passionate fanbase of Feyenoord. And for that reason it had always been his wish to return to Rotterdam one day. So there was no better venue for…

“I can’t watch it back now,” says Morten Ramm. “It is just too painful.” Ramm – a former top-flight footballer in Norway and now a more established comedian – is looking back on his decision to get plastered with a group of friends and play a football match as a YouTube stunt. Each team had to have a blood alcohol concentration averaging at least 1.0mg/ml – which is five times above the legal limit to drive a vehicle in Norway. Morten and his team-mates had a wild “pre-party” in the dressing room, glugging the spirits freely, before staging an unbearably-bad kickabout in which participants were curling up on the floor, vomiting on the sidelines and engaging in minor skirmishes. When one player did finally open the scoring, the goal was…

“I AM NOT A PERSON WITH COLLEGE DEGREES – EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE LEARNED, I HAVE LEARNED THROUGH EXPERIENCE” “When helping Johan Cruyff write his autobiography, My Turn, I quickly realised that it could easily have filled more than double its 300 pages. This, as everyone knows, was a man who had plenty to say. This is something that I was able to benefit from during the many years I collaborated with him for his weekly column in Telesport, the sport section of Dutch daily De Telegraaf. He enjoyed triggering a reaction with his analyses, and he provided the odd wake-up call not only for Dutch football but also the government. Cruyff once criticised the Ministry of Finance in relation to a tax law. Such was Cruyff’s standing,…

“I thought it would be nice to hear from the people who invest all their time and money into going to games,” Arsenal Fan TV founder Robbie Lyle tells FFT . “I wanted to give the fans a voice.” Together with his partner Tao, Robbie grabbed a video camera and a microphone and stood outside the Emirates Stadium as fans streamed out following a 2012 North London Derby against Tottenham. “We were unknown at that stage,” he explains, “but my thinking was: ‘There are 60,000 people here. By the law of averages, someone will want to talk about the game.’” They initially enjoyed a cult following, before the opening day of the 2013-14 campaign proved to be a breakthrough. Arsenal fans had grown exasperated by the club’s…

 Which strikers did you look up to the most when you were a kid? “If you head the ball well, you are the master of the penalty area and you dictate where the ball goes” Thierry Henry. My other heroes were Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane, but the best was Henry. He had a particular way of scoring his goals. He’s always spoken of as an Arsenal player but he also played for Barcelona, Juventus and Monaco, and was a winner everywhere he went. In the modern game, I like Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski as well as Karim Benzema. They’re killers in front of goal. Did you try to model your game on those players as you developed? I tried to learn from them but I never tried to copy…

FFT loves nothing more than spending our lonely nights tucked up in bed, spooning a football while watching goal compilations on DVD. But our quality time beneath a Damien Mori doona could be coming to an end, as a new report reveals that technology might be damaging our sleep. Researchers at King’s College in London and Cardiff University in the Welsh capital analysed 11 studies, involving more than 125,000 people, to determine if electronic devices affect our rest. They discovered that if you use a smartphone or tablet before hitting the sack, or even watch a bit of television, it doubled the risk of you having a bad night’s kip – which is the last thing that we want before a match. And, more worryingly for FFT, the…